front cover of Calling Family
Calling Family
Digital Technologies and the Making of Transnational Care Collectives
Tanja Ahlin
Rutgers University Press, 2023
How do digital technologies shape both how people care for each other and, through that, who they are? With technological innovation is on the rise and increasing migration introducing vast distances between family members--a situation additionally complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the requirements of physical distancing, especially for the most vulnerable – older adults--this is a pertinent question. Through ethnographic fieldwork among families of migrating nurses from Kerala, India, Tanja Ahlin explores how digital technologies shape elder care when adult children and their aging parents live far apart. Coming from a country in which appropriate elder care is closely associated with co-residence, these families tinker with smartphones and social media to establish how care at a distance can and should be done to be considered good. Through the notion of transnational care collectives, Calling Family uncovers the subtle workings of digital technologies on care across countries and continents when being physically together is not feasible. Calling Family provides a better understanding of technological relationality that can only be expected to further intensify in the future.
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Cancer and the Politics of Care
Inequalities and Interventions in Global Perspective
Edited by Linda Rae Bennett, Lenore Manderson, and Belinda Spagnoletti
University College London, 2023
An ethnographic examination of the effects of structural inequalities on cancer treatment around the world.
 
Taking an ethnographic approach, the contributors to this book offer new examinations of cancer and its treatment to show how social, economic, race, gender, and other structural inequalities intersect, compound, and complicate health inequalities. Cancer experiences and impacts are explored across eleven countries: Argentina, Brazil, Denmark, France, Greece, India, Indonesia, Italy, Senegal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The volume engages with specific cancers from the point of primary prevention to screening, diagnosis, treatment (or its absence), and end-of-life care. Cancer and the Politics of Care traverses new theoretical terrain by explicitly critiquing cancer interventions, their limitations and success, the politics that drive them, and their embeddedness in local cultures and value systems. Its diversity and innovation ensure its wide utility among those working in and studying medical anthropology, social anthropology, and other fields at the intersections of social science, medicine, and health equity.
 
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Care of the Dying Patient
Edited by David A. Fleming & John C. Hagan III
University of Missouri Press, 2010
Although the need for improved care for dying patients is widely recognized and frequently discussed, few books address the needs of the physicians, nurses, social workers, therapists, hospice team members, and pastoral counselors involved in care. Care of the Dying Patient contains material not found in other sources, offering advice and solutions to anyone—professional caregiver or family member—confronted with incurable illness and death. Its authors have lectured and published extensively on care of the dying patient and here review a wide range of topics to show that relief of physical suffering is not the only concern in providing care.

This collection encompasses diverse aspects of end-of-life care across multiple disciplines, offering a broad perspective on such central issues as control of pain and other symptoms, spirituality, the needs of caregivers, and special concerns regarding the elderly. In its pages, readers will find out how to:
  • effectively utilize palliative-care services and activate timely referral to hospice,
  • arrange for care that takes into account patients’ cultural beliefs, and
  • respond to spiritual and psychological distress, including the loss of hope that often overshadows physical suffering.
The authors especially emphasize palliative care and hospice, since some physicians fear that such referrals may be viewed by patients and families as abandonment. They also address ethical and legal risks in pain management and warn that fear of overprescribing pain medication may inadvertently lead to ineffective pain relief and even place the treating team at risk of liability for undertreatment of pain.

While physicians have the ability to treat disease, they also help to determine the time and place of death, and they must recognize that end-of-life choices are made more complex than ever before by advances in medicine and at the same time increasingly important. Care of the Dying Patient addresses some of the challenges frequently confronted in terminal care and points the way toward a more compassionate way of death.
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Children as Caregivers
The Global Fight against Tuberculosis and HIV in Zambia
Hunleth, Jean
Rutgers University Press, 2017
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Close to Me, but Far Away
Living with Alzheimer's
Burton M. Wheeler
University of Missouri Press, 2001

Each day Burt Wheeler is plagued by the same question. When did it happen? If he could pinpoint the beginning, then he might begin to make peace with himself. He vividly remembers when the doctor diagnosed Kee, his loving wife of over fifty years, with "Alzheimer-type dementia." But, as hard as he tries, it's impossible for him to determine when his wife's dementia started. He remembers her bout with depression, but that, he thinks, was surely due to her breast cancer. There was their dream vacation to Greece when Kee seemed so tired and indifferent. There were the unopened books, when reading had always been such a source of pleasure to her. And, he recalls, the gradual personality changes with friends, and even with family.

Wheeler started writing this book as a form of self-therapy when he found himself thrust into the role of caretaker to his wife--a role for which he felt unprepared. He wrote in memory of the very special woman his wife had been—a wonderful mother, charming and gracious, as well as a deeply respected psychotherapist. She was also his best friend, and he loved her. So, to some degree, this is a love story—a story about two people who have shared life's ups and downs for over fifty years. It's also about commitment.

In Close to Me, but Far Away, Wheeler provides insight into what a caregiver's day is like, as he shares his most intimate thoughts with us. The book provides a window into the author's personal life as he seeks to confront his own ineptitude and the occasional despair he feels as he deals daily with Alzheimer's. He also touches on the question of what keeps him going through times of exhaustion and frustration. Part of his answer lies in holding tenaciously to memories, and part lies in what he believes is a human's extraordinary capacity to continue plodding along simply because he must. Wheeler also believes in rejoicing in the beauty that can be experienced, and he believes in humor, humor achieved only by distancing ourselves from the events that so deeply engage us. And, of course, there is also the indefinable nature of love.

Alzheimer's is a terrifying and horrible disease, as much for loved ones as for the patient. Those who are caregivers or friends of Alzheimer's patients or caregivers will empathize with Burton Wheeler's story. And some might receive comfort from his words or learn from him. Because Alzheimer's is a disease that could affect anyone, Close to Me, but Far Away is a story that should be read by all.

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front cover of The Emotional Journey of the Alzheimer's Family
The Emotional Journey of the Alzheimer's Family
Robert B. Santulli and Kesstan Blandin
Dartmouth College Press, 2015
Alzheimer’s disease is a growing public health crisis. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, there are 5.4 million victims of this disease; by 2050, there will be close to 15 million people who suffer from this debilitating disorder of memory, thinking, personality, and functioning. The disease profoundly affects immediate family members, close friends, and neighbors. These people—the Alzheimer’s family—undergo tremendous psychological and emotional change as they witness the cruel and relentless progression of the disease in their loved one. Incorporating over thirty years of experience with Alzheimer’s patients and their families with current medical knowledge, the authors chart the complex emotional journey of the Alzheimer’s family from the onset of the disease through the death of the loved one. They discuss the anger that rises in the face of discordant views of the disease, the defenses that emerge when family members are unwilling to accept a dementia diagnosis, and the common emotions of anxiety, guilt, anger, and shame. They focus especially on grief as the core response to losing a loved one to dementia, and describe the difficult processes of adaptation and acceptance, which lead to personal growth. Final chapters emphasize the importance of establishing a care community and how to understand and cope with personal stress. This volume will be useful to medical professionals and ordinary people close to or caring for a person with dementia.
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Faith and Mental Health
Religious Resources for Healing
Harold G. Koenig
Templeton Press, 2005

Dr. Harold Koenig opens a window on mental health, providing an unprecedented source of practical information about the relationship between religion and mental health. He examines how Christianity and other world religions deliver mental health services today, and he makes recommendations, based on research, expertise, and experience, for new programs to meet local needs.

Meticulously researched and documented, Faith and Mental Health includes

  • Research on the relationship between religion and positive emotions, psychiatric illnesses, and severe and persistent mental disorders
  • Ways in which religion has influenced mental health historically, and how now and in the future it can be involved with mental health
  • A comprehensive description and categorization of Christian and non-Christian faith-based organizations that provide mental health resources
  • Resources for religious professionals and faith communities on how to design effective programs

Presenting a combination of the history and current research of mental health and religion along with a thorough examination of faith-based organizations operating in the field, this book is a one-of-a-kind resource for the healthcare community; its valuable research and insights will benefit medical and religious professionals, and anyone concerned with the future of mental health care.

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Forced to Care
Coercion and Caregiving in America
Evelyn Nakano Glenn
Harvard University Press, 2012

The United States faces a growing crisis in care. The number of people needing care is growing while the ranks of traditional caregivers have shrunk. The status of care workers is a critical concern.

Evelyn Nakano Glenn offers an innovative interpretation of care labor in the United States by tracing the roots of inequity along two interconnected strands: unpaid caring within the family; and slavery, indenture, and other forms of coerced labor. By bringing both into the same analytic framework, she provides a convincing explanation of the devaluation of care work and the exclusion of both unpaid and paid care workers from critical rights such as minimum wage, retirement benefits, and workers' compensation. Glenn reveals how assumptions about gender, family, home, civilization, and citizenship have shaped the development of care labor and been incorporated into law and social policies. She exposes the underlying systems of control that have resulted in women—especially immigrants and women of color—performing a disproportionate share of caring labor. Finally, she examines strategies for improving the situation of unpaid family caregivers and paid home healthcare workers.

This important and timely book illuminates the source of contradictions between American beliefs about the value and importance of caring in a good society and the exploitation and devalued status of those who actually do the caring.

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Forget Burial
HIV Kinship, Disability, and Queer/Trans Narratives of Care
Marty Fink
Rutgers University Press, 2021
Finalist for the LGBTQ Nonfiction Award from Lambda Literary

Queers and trans people in the 1980s and early ‘90s were dying of AIDS and the government failed to care. Lovers, strangers, artists, and community activists came together take care of each other in the face of state violence. In revisiting these histories alongside ongoing queer and trans movements, this book uncovers how early HIV care-giving narratives actually shape how we continue to understand our genders and our disabilities. The queer and trans care-giving kinships that formed in response to HIV continue to inspire how we have sex and build chosen families in the present. In unearthing HIV community newsletters, media, zines, porn, literature, and even vampires, Forget Burial bridges early HIV care-giving activisms with contemporary disability movements. In refusing to bury the legacies of long-term survivors and of those we have lost, this book brings early HIV kinships together with ongoing movements for queer and trans body self-determination.
 
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God's Waiting Room
Racial Reckoning at Life's End
Casey Golomski
Rutgers University Press, 2025
Can older racists change their tune, or will they haunt us further once they're gone? Rich in mystery and life’s lessons, God’s Waiting Room: Racial Reckoning at Life’s End considers what matters in the end for older white adults and the younger Black nurses who care for them. An innovation in creative nonfiction, Casey Golomski’s years of immersive research at a nursing home in South Africa, thirty years after the end apartheid, are narrated as a one-day, room-by-room tour. Told in breathtakingly intimate and witty conversations with the home’s residents and nurses, including the untold story of Nelson Mandela’s Robben Island prison nurse, readers learn how ageism, sexism, and racism intersect and impact health care both in South Africa and in the United States, as well as create conditions in which people primed to be enemies find grace despite the odds.

For copyright reasons, this edition is not available in the South African Development Community and Kenya.
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Hearts of Wisdom
American Women Caring for Kin, 1850-1940
Emily K. Abel
Harvard University Press, 2002

The image of the female caregiver holding a midnight vigil at the bedside of a sick relative is so firmly rooted in our collective imagination we might assume that such caregiving would have attracted the scrutiny of numerous historians. As Emily Abel demonstrates in this groundbreaking study of caregiving in America across class and ethnic divides and over the course of ninety years, this has hardly been the case.

While caring for sick and disabled family members was commonplace for women in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America, that caregiving, the caregivers' experience of it, and the medical profession's reaction to it took diverse and sometimes unexpected forms. A complex series of historical changes, Abel shows, has profoundly altered the content and cultural meaning of care. Hearts of Wisdom is an immersion into that "world of care." Drawing on antebellum slave narratives, white farm women's diaries, and public health records, Abel puts together a multifaceted picture of what caregiving meant to American women--and what it cost them--from the pre-Civil War years to the brink of America's entry into the Second World War. She shows that caregiving offered women an arena in which experience could be parlayed into expertise, while at the same time the revolution in bacteriology and the transformation of the formal health care system were weakening women's claim to that expertise.

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front cover of Helping Yourself Help Others
Helping Yourself Help Others
A Book for Caregivers
Rosalynn Carter
University of Arkansas Press, 2023

“A practical, highly informative, and sympathetic guide.”
The Washington Post


Most of us will become a caregiver at some point in our lives. And we will assume this role for the most personal reason imaginable: wanting to help someone we love. But we may not know where to start, and we may be afraid of losing ourselves in this daunting task.

Former first lady Rosalynn Carter, a longtime advocate for caregivers and mental health, knows firsthand the challenges of this labor of love. Drawing upon her own experiences and those of hundreds of others whose stories she gathered over many decades, Mrs. Carter offers reassuring, practical advice to any caregiver who has faced stress, anxiety, or loneliness.

Helping Yourself Help Others, reissued here with a new foreword, is as relevant as ever. Long before the COVID-19 pandemic inspired national conversations about the vast undervaluing of unpaid caregiving, the dangers of burnout, and the merits of self-care for relief, Rosalynn Carter was shining a light on these matters and everything else that caregivers confront. Filled with empathy, this encouraging guide will help you meet a difficult challenge head-on and find fulfillment and empowerment in your caregiving role.

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front cover of Hidden Heroes
Hidden Heroes
America's Military Caregivers
Rajeev Ramchand
RAND Corporation, 2014
Little has been reported about “military caregivers”—the population of those who care for wounded, ill, and injured military personnel and veterans. This report summarizes the results of a study designed to describe the magnitude of military caregiving in the United States today, as well as to identify gaps in the array of programs, policies, and initiatives designed to support military caregivers.
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Humanizing Brain Tumors
Strategies for You and Your Physician
Edited by Jonathan A. Forbes, Abdelkader Mahammedi, and Soma Sengupta
University of Cincinnati Press, 2022
Three practicing doctors present the stories of nine individuals diagnosed with brain tumors.
 
Humanizing Brain Tumors details the lived experiences of patients and their loved ones, from the presentation of symptoms to diagnosis and treatment. These nine test cases and the accompanying compendium offer insight and guidance to anyone living with, caring for, or treating those with brain tumors. Written with a humanistic, yet realistic touch, the authors have created a resource that reminds readers of the important partnership between doctors, patients, and caregivers.
 
This collection delves into our modern understanding of brain tumors, using clinical presentation to illustrate the patient experience and summarize methods of treatment. Imagery, including both MRI scans and medical illustrations, facilitates a vivid description of neuroanatomy. Providing a concise description of modern forms of treatment for patients affected with brain tumors, this book presents a patient-centric perspective.

Humanizing Brain Tumors will appeal to the hundreds of thousands of patients and their loved ones who are affected by brain tumors every year.
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Making Health Care Whole
Integrating Spirituality into Patient Care
Christina Puchalski
Templeton Press, 2021

In the last fifteen years, the field of palliative care has experienced a surge in interest in spirituality as an important aspect of caring for seriously ill and dying patients. While spirituality has been generally recognized as an essential dimension of palliative care, uniformity of spiritual care practice has been lacking across health care settings due to factors like varying understandings and definitions of spirituality, lack of resources and practical tools, and limited professional education and training in spiritual care.

In order to address these shortcomings, more than forty spiritual and palliative care experts gathered for a national conference to discuss guidelines for incorporating spirituality into palliative care. Their consensus findings form the basis of Making Health Care Whole. This important new resource provides much-needed definitions and charts a common language for addressing spiritual care across the disciplines of medicine, nursing, social work, chaplaincy, psychology, and other groups. It presents models of spiritual care that are broad and inclusive, and provides tools for screening, assessment, care planning, and interventions. This book also advocates a team approach to spiritual care, and specifies the roles of each professional on the team.
 
Serving as both a scholarly review of the field as well as a practical resource with specific recommendations to improve spiritual care in clinical practice, Making Health Care Whole will benefit hospices and palliative care programs in hospitals, home care services, and long-term care services. It will also be a valuable addition to the curriculum at seminaries, schools of theology, and medical and nursing schools.
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front cover of Meaning in Suffering
Meaning in Suffering
Caring Practices in the Health Professions
Edited by Nancy Johnston and Alwilda Scholler-Jaquish
University of Wisconsin Press, 2007
     Compelling, timely, and essential reading for healthcare providers, Meaning in Suffering addresses the multiplicity of meanings suffering brings to all it touches: patients, families, health workers, and human science professionals. Examining suffering in writing that is both methodologically rigorous and accessible, the contributors preserve first-hand experiences using narrative ethnography, existential hermeneutics, hermeneutic phenomenology, and traditional ethnography. They offer nuanced insights into suffering as a human condition experienced by persons deserving of dignity, empathy, and understanding. Collectively, these essays demonstrate that understanding the suffering of the "other" reveals something vital about the moral courage required to heal—and stay humane—in the face of suffering.
 
 
Winner, Nursing Research Category, American Journal of Nursing
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front cover of Migrants Who Care
Migrants Who Care
West Africans Working and Building Lives in U.S. Health Care
Fumilayo Showers
Rutgers University Press, 2023
As the U.S. population ages and as health care needs become more complex, demand for paid care workers in home and institutional settings has increased. This book draws attention to the reserve of immigrant labor that is called on to meet this need. Migrants Who Care tells the little-known story of a group of English-speaking West African immigrants who have become central to the U.S. health and long-term care systems. With high human capital and middle-class pre-migration backgrounds, these immigrants - hailing from countries as diverse as Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria, and Liberia - encounter blocked opportunities in the U.S. labor market. They then work in the United States, as home health aides, certified nursing assistants, qualified disability support professionals, and licensed practical and registered nurses.

This book reveals the global, political, social, and economic factors that have facilitated the entry of West African women and men into the health care labor force (home and institutional care for older adults and individuals with physical and intellectual disabilities; and skilled nursing). It highlights these immigrants’ role as labor brokers who tap into their local ethnic and immigrant communities to channel co-ethnics to meet this labor demand. It illustrates how West African care workers understand their work across various occupational settings and segments in the health care industry. This book reveals the transformative processes migrants undergo as they become produced, repackaged, and deployed as health care workers after migration.

Ultimately, this book tells the very real and human story of an immigrant group surmounting tremendous obstacles to carve out a labor market niche in health care, providing some of the most essential and intimate aspects of care labor to the most vulnerable members of society.
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front cover of Parish Nursing - 2011 Edition
Parish Nursing - 2011 Edition
Stories of Service and Care
Verna Benner Carson
Templeton Press, 2011

The engaging stories in Parish Nursing provide accessible and enjoyable accounts of real parish nurses, both paid and volunteer, who attend to the needs of their congregations in a variety of ways—from home, hospice, and hospital visits to community outreach. This revised edition gathers their stories of hearing and heeding God’s call, of their faith that they are doing the “right thing,” of their joys, sorrows, and challenges, and of their quiet dedication as they offer their time and talents to meet the needs of others.


 

By offering inspiration and encouragement, along with a healthy dose of updated practical advice, this collection will make parish nursing theory come to life. These stories will honor practicing parish nurses, will guide the way for anyone contemplating parish nursing as a career, and will challenge church members and leaders to examine the role that their congregations play in health ministry—especially in meeting the long-term care needs of an aging population.


 
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Parish Nursing
Stories Of Service & Care
Verna Carson
Templeton Press, 2002
Parish Nursing presents a vision where nurses can serve as the vital link between secular healthcare and sacred faith-based systems. Nurses are able to provide direct ministry to members of the congregation and also can be the communicators, teachers, motivators, and encouragers of others. The parish nurse could be a key person to link the two systems and provide truly wholistic care. Reading the stories of parish nurses gives us hope that this vision might be possible—indeed must be possible—if our aging society is to flourish in the years ahead.
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Parkinson’s Disease and the Family
A New Guide
Nutan Sharma, M.D., and Elaine Richman, Ph.D.
Harvard University Press, 2005

Parkinson’s disease is a movement disorder characterized by tremor, stiffness, and slow gait. It affects 500,000 people in the United States, with approximately 50,000 new cases diagnosed annually. But its impact is much wider. Family members with little understanding of the disease often find themselves struggling to help their loved one navigate the complexities of the health care system. Patients wonder, Which treatments are best for me? Will I be able to live on my own? Should I join a drug trial?

In this straightforward, compassionate guide, Nutan Sharma and Elaine Richman address these concerns and more. They provide a thorough review of the etiology, diagnosis, and current treatment of Parkinson’s, with special consideration given to the effect on family dynamics and routines—including the often neglected topics of long-term care and sexual function. The authors also review the pros and cons of various alternative therapies, including nutritional supplements, massage therapy, and traditional Chinese medicine.

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front cover of Playing the Ponies and Other Medical Mysteries Solved
Playing the Ponies and Other Medical Mysteries Solved
Stuart B. Mushlin, MD, FACP
Rutgers University Press, 2017
2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

With over forty years of experience as a sought after diagnostician, Dr. Stuart Mushlin has cracked his share of medical mysteries, ones in which there are bigger gambles than playing the ponies at the track. Some of his patients show up with puzzling symptoms, calling for savvy medical detective work. Others seem to present cut-and-dry cases, but they turn out to be suffering from rare or serious conditions.
 
In Playing the Ponies and Other Medical Mysteries Solved, Dr. Mushlin shares some of the most intriguing cases he has encountered, revealing the twists and turns of each patient’s diagnosis and treatment process. Along the way, he imparts the secrets to his success as a medical detective—not specialized high-tech equipment, but time-honored techniques like closely observing, touching, and listening to patients. He also candidly describes cases where he got things wrong, providing readers with honest insights into both the joys and dilemmas of his job.   
 
Dr. Mushlin does not just treat diseases; he treats people. And this is not just a book about the ailments he diagnosed; it is also about the scared, uncertain, ailing individuals he helped in the process. Filled with real-life medical stories you’ll have to read to believe, Playing the Ponies is both a suspenseful page-turner and a heartfelt reflection on a life spent caring for patients. 
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Prayers and Rituals at a Time of Illness and Dying
The Practices of Five World Religions
Patricia Fosarelli
Templeton Press, 2008

In the course of caring for the ill or dying, health care professionals are sometimes the only ones available to provide spiritual comfort to their patients. In our modern pluralistic society, where patients could come from any number of religious traditions, it can often be difficult to find exactly the right words in these situations.

Prayers and Rituals at a Time of Illness and Dying: The Practices of Five World Religions by experienced physician and theologian Pat Fosarelli offers clear instructions for health care professionals on how to better understand the needs of their Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish patients during these difficult times. Devoting separate chapters to each tradition, Fosarelli briefly outlines the basic beliefs and then looks at the main tenets of each religion, exploring the varied approaches that they take to illness and end-of-life issues. For each tradition, she also describes practices and offers suitable prayers. Each chapter suggests modifications that may be necessary for Western hospitals, modifications for children, and specific suggestions about what not to do or say in respect to different faith traditions.

This easy-to-use, pocket-sized resource will be referenced again and again by physicians, paramedics, hospital and military chaplains, pastoral counselors, hospice providers, and other medical professionals.

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Restoring the Healer
Spiritual Self-Care for Health Care Professionals
William Dorman
Templeton Press, 2015
Burn out. Two words that haunt those in high stress jobs, especially in the medical profession. Long hours and the literal life-and-death nature of the field creates expectations to not only be on call at all hours, but to be at one’s best, even at 3:00 AM after a twenty-hour shift. So much energy is devoted to the care of others that self-care is forgotten.
Yet, more are noticing and research confirms that self-care is needed, not only for personal sanity but also for quality of work. Unwell medical professionals are not the best at treating others. And this self-care includes not just rest, food, and water, but a deeper care, one that tends the spiritual side as well.
To both the spiritually active and the spiritually resistant, hospital chaplain William Dorman offers a guide to understand a more comprehensive, full-bodied self-care. Each chapter begins with case studies, concrete experiences that help unpack abstract concepts which bring much needed peace to stressed individuals. Dorman also structures each chapter to end with prayers and action steps, which offer more concrete ways to care for the self.
From working as a hospital chaplain for over 18 years, and serving as the director of chaplaincy services for the largest integrated health care system in New Mexico, Rev. Dorman recognizes the stresses that come to those who have made it their profession to heal others. Healers need healing too—and this guide is the first step.
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Spiritual Caregiving
Healthcare As A Ministry
Verna Benner Carson
Templeton Press, 2004

With today's cumbersome insurance procedures, government regulations, endless paperwork, and concerns about malpractice rates, many health care professionals are asking: "Why am I doing this? Am I making a difference to my patients? Is there a better way—and if so, what is it?" In this book, Carson and Koenig examine the state of the health care system with the goal of providing healthcare professionals and caregivers the inspiration and practical tools to reclaim their sense of purpose.

The book begins with an evaluation of the current system from the perspective of the spiritual vision that initially motivated and nourished many caregivers. The authors then pose a vision of a health care system that supports and nurtures the spirituality of patients and their families, of which some elements already exist.

An overview is provided on the preparation necessary for health care professionals to offer spiritual care when there are major implications—for people with chronic illnesses, psychiatric issues, devastating injuries, and those preparing for surgery, facing death, and those living with chronic pain. Also explored are ways that health professionals and caregivers can maintain their own spiritual health even as they work to bring about healing, comfort, and solace to others.

Woven throughout the book are the personal narratives of physicians, nurses, chaplains, health care educators, community resource workers, administrators, therapists, and psychologists—all from a wide range of religious traditions. Their examples inspire and assist professionals in renewing the spiritual focus of health care.

 

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Spiritual Dimensions of Nursing Practice
Verna Benner Carson
Templeton Press, 2008

Ever since the first edition of Verna Benner Carson's Spiritual Dimensions of Nursing Practice went out of print, second-hand copies have been highly sought after by practitioners in the field and nursing school faculty who appreciated the comprehensive scope of the seminal work on spirituality and health. In this highly anticipated revised edition, Carson and her co-editor, Harold G. Koenig, have thoroughly revised and updated this classic in the field.

The revised edition builds on the foundations laid in the first, providing perspectives on new research in the spiritual dimensions of nursing care, applying nursing theory to spiritual care, and addressing the spiritual needs of both nurses and patients. It also examines ethical issues in nursing and the impact of legal decisions on health care issues. Contributors address issues of spiritual development across the entire lifespan—from the spiritual needs and influences of the very young to the elderly, including those facing chronic illnesses or death. The volume takes a similarly broad approach in addressing spiritual issues from a variety of faith backgrounds—including both theistic and pantheistic religious practices, so that nurses can be prepared to meet the needs of patients from various religious traditions.
 
Second to chaplains, nurses are the major providers of spiritual care, and no other book will serve their needs like Spiritual Dimensions of Nursing Practice.
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Spirituality In Patient Care
Why How When & What
Harold Koenig
Templeton Press, 2002

This book is intended as a guide for practicing physicians, medical students, and residents to help identify and address the spiritual needs of patients. Those who will benefit most will be physicians who wish to know how to integrate spirituality into clinical practice in an effective and sensitive manner. Other professionals, such as nurses and chaplains, may use this book as they interact with doctors, other health professionals, and hospital administrators.

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Spirituality in Patient Care
Why, How, When, and What
Harold G Koenig
Templeton Press, 2013
Praise for the previous edition:
“I highly recommend this book as reading for all physicians and would certainly recommend it for any course on medical ethics and/or required reading for any medical student.”—Journal of the National Medical Association
 
Since the publication of the first edition of Spirituality in Patient Care in 2002, the book has earned a reputation as the authoritative introduction to the subject for health professionals interested in identifying and addressing the spiritual needs of patients. The body of research on religion, spirituality, and health continues to grow at a dramatic rate, creating an urgent need for a new edition of this landmark work. In this, the third edition, Harold G. Koenig, M.D., updates every chapter by incorporating the newest research and introducing sensible ways of translating that research into caring for patients.
 
Like previous editions, this new one addresses the whys, hows, whens, and whats of patient-centered integration of spirituality into patient care so that health professionals, including physicians in primary care and the medical and surgical specialties, can utilize this information in clinical practice. Whole chapters are also included offering profession-specific information for nurses, clergy, mental health professionals, social workers, and occupational and physical therapists. Other chapters address topics like culturally and spiritually sensitive care for each major religious group, potential limitations or barriers to application, and even what may happen when research on spirituality and health is misapplied. Throughout these chapters, readers will find new case histories and clinical examples on how to integrate spirituality into patient care depending on their particular circumstances. A ten-session model course curriculum on spirituality and health care for medical students and residents is also provided, with suggestions on how to adapt it for nursing, social work, physical and occupational therapy, and mental health training programs.
 
For more than ten years Spirituality in Patient Care has offered sound guidance to anyone wishing to do more than simply treat their patients’ physical symptoms. Treating the whole patient often requires becoming something more than just a skilled technician. With this new edition, Dr. Koenig once again shows the way for any health professional seeking to bridge this gap and help patientsregain their lives by finding hope, meaning, and healing.
 

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Spirituality in Patient Care
Why, How, When, and What
Harold G Koenig
Templeton Press, 2007
This landmark handbook for health professionals interested in identifying and addressing the spiritual needs of patients has been significantly revised and expanded. Over the past five years, since the first edition was written, there has been increased research on the relationships among religion, spirituality, and health, and further discussions on the application of these findings to clinical practice. Every section of the book has been rewritten and updated with current research. "I think this version will be my most important contribution to the field of spirituality and health," says Dr. Koenig. "Every bit of what I know about the integration of spirituality into clinical practice, learned over twenty years, is contained in this book."
Koenig addresses the whys, hows, whens, and whats of patient-centered integration of spirituality into patient care, including details on the health-related sacred traditions for each major religious group. He provides health care professionals with the training necessary to screen patients sensitively and competently for spiritual needs, begin to communicate with patients about these issues, and learn when to refer patients to trained spiritual-care professionals who can competently address spiritual needs.
New sections specifically address mental-health professionals, nurses, chaplains and pastoral counselors, social workers, and occupational and physical therapists.
A ten-session model course curriculum on spirituality and health care for medical students and residents is provided, with suggestions on how to adapt it for the training of nurses, social workers, and rehabilitation specialists.
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front cover of Transplanting Care
Transplanting Care
Shifting Commitments in Health and Care in the United States
Heinemann, Laura L.
Rutgers University Press, 2016
The sudden call, the race to the hospital, the high-stakes operation—the drama of transplant surgery is well known. But what happens before and after the surgery? In Transplanting Care, Laura L. Heinemann examines the daily lives of midwestern organ transplant patients and those who care for them, from pretransplant preparations through to the long posttransplant recovery.
 
Heinemann points out that as efforts to control healthcare costs gain urgency—and as new surgical techniques, drug therapies, and home medical equipment advance—most of the transplant process now takes place at home, among kin. Indeed, the transplant system effectively depends on unpaid care labor, typically provided by spouses, parents, siblings, and others. Drawing on scores of interviews with patients, relatives, and healthcare professionals, Heinemann follows a variety of patients and loved ones as they undertake this uncertain and strenuous “transplant journey.” She also shows how these home-based caregiving efforts take place within the larger economic and political context of a paucity of resources for patients and caregivers, who ultimately must surmount numerous obstacles. The author concludes that the many snags encountered by transplant patients and loved ones make a clear case for more comprehensive health and social policy that treats care as a necessarily shared public responsibility.  
 
An illuminating look at the long transplant journey, Transplanting Care also offers broader insight into how we handle infirmity in America—and how we might do a better job of doing so. 
 
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front cover of Victories Never Last
Victories Never Last
Reading and Caregiving in a Time of Plague
Robert Zaretsky
University of Chicago Press, 2022
A timely and nuanced book that sets the author’s experience as a nursing home volunteer during the pandemic alongside the wisdom of great thinkers who confronted their own plagues.

In any time of disruption or grief, many of us seek guidance in the work of great writers who endured similar circumstances. During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, historian and biographer Robert Zaretsky did the same while also working as a volunteer in a nursing home in south Texas. In Victories Never Last Zaretsky weaves his reflections on the pandemic siege of his nursing home with the testimony of six writers on their own times of plague: Thucydides, Marcus Aurelius, Michel de Montaigne, Daniel Defoe, Mary Shelley, and Albert Camus, whose novel The Plague provides the title of this book.
 
Zaretsky delves into these writers to uncover lessons that can provide deeper insight into our pandemic era. At the same time, he goes beyond the literature to invoke his own experience of the tragedy that enveloped his Texas nursing home, one which first took the form of chronic loneliness and then, inevitably, the deaths of many residents whom we come to know through Zaretsky’s stories. In doing so, Zaretsky shows the power of great literature to connect directly to one’s own life in a different moment and time.
 
For all of us still struggling to comprehend this pandemic and its toll, Zaretsky serves as a thoughtful and down-to-earth guide to the many ways we can come to know and make peace with human suffering.
 
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front cover of Welcome to Wherever We Are
Welcome to Wherever We Are
A Memoir of Family, Caregiving, and Redemption
Deborah J. Cohan
Rutgers University Press, 2020
Winner of the 2022 Memoir Prize for Books - Caregiving category​
ESS Public Sociology Award​
Recommended Book in Domestic Violence by DomesticShelters.org

How do you go about caregiving for an ill and elderly parent with a lifelong history of abuse and control, intertwined with expressions of intense love and adoration? How do you reconcile the resulting ambivalence, fear, and anger?
 
Welcome to Wherever We Are is a meditation on what we hold onto, what we let go of, how we remember others and ultimately how we’re remembered. Deborah Cohan shares her story of caring for her father, a man who was simultaneously loud, gentle, loving and cruel and whose brilliant career as an advertising executive included creating slogans like “Hey, how ‘bout a nice Hawaiian punch?” Wrestling with emotional extremes that characterize abusive relationships, Cohan shows how she navigated life with a man who was at once generous and affectionate, creating magical coat pockets filled with chocolate kisses when she was a little girl, yet who was also prone to searing, vicious remarks like “You’d make my life easier if you’d commit suicide.”
 
In this gripping memoir, Cohan tells her unique personal story while also weaving in her expertise as a sociologist and domestic abuse counselor to address broader questions related to marriage, violence, divorce, only children, intimacy and loss. A story most of us can relate to as we reckon with past and future choices against the backdrop of complicated family dynamics, Welcome to Wherever We Are is about how we might come to live our own lives better amidst unpredictable changes through grief and healing.

Questions for Discussion (https://d3tto5i5w9ogdd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/11140346/Cohan_Discussion.docx)
 
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front cover of What Do I Say?
What Do I Say?
Talking with Patients about Spirituality
Elizabeth Johnston-Taylor
Templeton Press, 2007
Health care professionals, clergy, chaplains, social workers, and others who counsel people in medical crisis often find themselves faced with deeply painful questions: Why is this happening to me? Am I dying? Why should I live? I'm just a burden to others.
Here is a workbook that suggests healing verbal responses to such expressions of spiritual pain. The author, an internationally recognized expert in spiritual caregiving, points out that wanting to help is one motivation for learning these skills, but there are also evidence-based reasons: helping patients express their innermost feelings promotes spiritual healing; spiritual health is related to physical and emotional health; spiritual coping helps patients accept and deal with their illness; and patients tend to want their health care professionals to know about their spirituality.
Lessons, tips, and exercises teach how to listen effectively, with guidelines for detecting and understanding the spiritual needs embedded in patients' conversations. Suggestions are provided for verbal responses to patients who express spiritual distress, including tips for building rapport, using self-disclosure, and praying with patients. A FAQ section deals with frequently asked questions and miscellaneous information, such as:
•What do I do when a patient talks on and on and I have to leave?
•How do I answer a "why" question?
•What do I say to a patient who believes a miracle will happen to cure them?
•What if I'm not religious? How can I talk about it?
By practicing and using these healing techniques, Taylor explains, healthcare professionals will be able to provide patients responses to their questions that allow them to become intellectually, emotionally, and physically aware of their spirituality so they can experience life more fully.
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